Help Wanted: a Pescatarian Archives Supervisor at Prince’s Paisley Park

I know a number of archivists read this newsletter on a regular basis so I will post this article for them. The rock star Prince’s Paisley Park estate outside Minneapolis became a permanent museum in 2016 following the musician’s passing. The estate is now looking for an archives supervisor to overlook the maintenance of their artifacts (which include his remains in an urn). They’ve posted a job listing to the American Alliance of Museums’ career website for a full-time position in the Archives Department.

The job posting includes all the regular items you might expect:

Actively work in the care, catalog, storage and preservation of all artifacts and archival materials; the care, cleaning, and monitoring of all exhibits.

Maintain and Update the archival database system.

Monitor the trafficking of archive inventory.

Assist the appropriate staff in having access to the archives collection as required.

and much more.

However, there is one requirement of the job that I am not used to seeing in help wanted ads: “must adhere to a pescatarian environment.”

As a pescatarian myself (and most of the time I am a true vegan), I was pleased to see that requirement posted in public.

NOTE: To anyone who is not familiar with the term, a pescatarian is defined as someone who adds fish and seafood to a vegetarian diet. There are many reasons people choose to forgo meat and poultry, but still eat fish. Some people choose to add fish to a vegetarian diet so they can get the health benefits of a plant-based diet plus heart-healthy fish.

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One Comment

Interesting that the organization would require that; it seems a bit intrusive. That aside, I am absolutely baffled at how or why they are including “the care, cleaning, and monitoring of all exhibits” or other artifact care in the job description of Archives Supervisor. Archivist, Curator, Collections Manager, and Registrar are all separate functions. The description here sounds more like a combination of all of these and much less like a true Archivist position. However, when I visited Paisley Park in November 2016, I saw abundant evidence that the organization contracted to turn the estate into a museum and operate it as such is not exactly current with best practices within the museum field. As a Museum Studies graduate student with a minimum of hands-on museum experience, even *I* could identify numerous problematic operational practices that ought to be inexcusable in an institution that charges a minimum of $50 entry fee for a stunted and rushed tour that was largely oblivious to the educational component of museum exhibitions, ignorant of intellectual and physical modifications that are reflective of ADA compliance, and was clearly focused on the hard sell of merchandise while the guides were generally incapable of answering questions that weren’t already answered within the script. Worst of all, at that time (I understand this has been changed since), the tour commenced with bringing each group into an atrium with a plinth case in the middle of the floor and in full 360-degree view that contained what *looked* like a scale model of Paisley Park. As the guide introduced the tour, she then informed us the “model” was in fact Prince’s URN. Containing his ashes.Right there, inches away from several of us on the tour! As the information sank in, several people exclaimed, some quite obviously upset, and even crying at the shock of being in such proximity to his ashes. It was a disturbing moment that cast a pall over the tour. As a lifelong fan of Prince Rogers Nelson, I was sorely disappointed in the experience.

He has been involved in genealogy for more than 35 years. He
has worked in the computer industry for more than 40 years in hardware,
software, and managerial positions. By the early 1970s, Dick was already
using a mainframe computer to enter his family data on punch cards. He
built his first home computer in 1980.